Tim Grobaty: Remembering Faye Willard of Dick & Faye's Cafe Bistro

SO LONG, FAYE: There were so many late nights of looking for a nice place to have a beer back in the 1980s. A place to shoot a little pool, grab a snack, enjoy a conversation over a few plastic pitchers of beer while a talent-packed jukebox played loud music, but not too loud to talk over.

We went to Dick & Faye's Cafe Bistro quite a bit in the early and mid-1980s, before our kids came along. We'd go with the stand-up poets of Long Beach, mostly. Your Gerald Locklins, your Rafael Zepedas.

Dick Hines and Faye Willard were the crazily friendly proprietors, especially Faye, who loved everyone except gamblers and dentists, with a mild disregard for people who didn't return empty pitchers to the bar.

Faye died May 1, after a short bout with pneumonia. She was 90.

Dick, Faye's longtime partner (after her three marriages) died a couple of decades ago, while Faye soldiered on behind the bar until she retired eight years ago, selling the business that became BJ's for a short time. Today it's the Bull Bar, at 3316 E. Seventh St. in Long Beach.

The Cafe Bistro was not your typical beer bar. For one thing, it didn't open till 10 p.m. Sometimes, you'd have to wait outside until 10:15 or later until Dick or Faye came down the steps from their apartments above the bar to open the joint (they lived in separate apartments, with a hole knocked through the adjoining wall).

People who grew impatient, or who had perhaps already had enough to drink to have lost their sense of decorum, would sometimes sit in their cars and honk the horn, which might have worked but did nothing to ensure courteous service.

But, once the ball got rolling, there was no more gracious taproom hostess than Faye. If she threw you out of the Bistro, it was for a good reason.

Gambling was 86-able, though there were plenty of signs tacked up warning pool-players of the consequences of a wager.

"There was one case of her 86-ing a girl who came in," recalls Faye's daughter Janet Lund. "Mom told her she was too nice a girl to be in a bar, so she threw her out."

"She was an institution in town," says Lund. "Everywhere we went, people would say, `Hi, Faye! Remember me?"'

Faye grew up on a farm in Iowa. After her parents divorced, her mother high-tailed it to work in Washington, D.C., leaving Faye with her grandfather and a bunch of cousins who didn't like having the interloper around.

"When she was older, she went to New York with a girlfriend during World War II," says Lund. "They were in a restaurant when some Marines who had too much to drink walked by and one of them fell into the booth next to my mom. He became her husband and my father. He died in a training exercise in 1951."

Faye made it to Long Beach in the late 1960s and owned the Players Club downtown on First Street before buying Cafe Bistro in 1970, tacking the Dick & Faye's part onto the name of the tavern.

The place was renowned for several reasons, not the least of which was Faye's hospitality. You can read plenty of testimonials on Yelp! and the Dick & Faye's Cafe Bistro Facebook page put together by Faye's granddaughter Sarah Lund.

Another reason was the Bistro's jukebox, acknowledged during the '80s (in the pre-CD jukebox days) as having the best selection in town, with tunes ranging from Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire" to Talking Heads' "Psycho Killer."

Then, there were the dime dogs. Dick and Faye usually had a pot of hot dogs and a basket of buns - and sometimes chili - off to the side of the bar. Next to Hot Dog Day at St. Joseph's, they're still the best we've had. They were served on the honor system, probably because anyone can be honorable for the price of a 10-cent hot dog.

And, Faye was either unclear on the law or just happy to have us and our friends hanging around, because she always let us order a few pitchers of beer at 1:55 a.m. and stay until they were dry.

We always tried to return the empties to the bar.

Faye's immediate family members - in addition to Janet, she is survived by son Steven Willard and five grandchildren - have held a private memorial. A more public gathering is in the planning stages. Check in with the Facebook page for details.